If Asked
by SadieGrace
Summary: Deeks has never sat down and made a list but, if asked, he could pinpoint all the important turning points in his relationship with Kensi. (Three-shot. Goes AU after 5x02)
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I clearly don't own anything related to NCIS:LA. I barely even own a TV.

* * *

If asked, he'd say they became partners—real partners, not just employees assigned to one another—one day in her car when he'd fires off his explanation for his attachment to the Beretta 92FS and then holds it out to her butt first, a silent statement that _I trust _you_ to have my back_. She doesn't touch it; he hears her own silent statement that _I need to know you trust me, not what the gun feels like in my hand. _ It feels like a hard-won prize, that decision on both their parts to do what is contrary to their own natures—he to trust someone with that intensely personal attachment to his gun (and, by extension, his safety), and she to deny her own curiosity in deference to another person's comfort. It's then that he begins to be not just willing to let her fire it, but almost eager for it.

When, a few weeks later at the practice range, he cheerfully challenges her to a contest—with the other person's gun (_I'll lay mine here, you lay yours here—on three, grab, load, and fire as fast as you can til you empty the clip. Highest score wins), _she doesn't say no. She still beats him—he shouldn't have expected any different—but when their targets roll in, each sporting tight center mass groupings, he realizes they've taken a leap into the deep end of trust and vulnerability.

(He thinks there's an added bonus there in the knowledge that they both now know that their partner can pick up an unfamiliar gun at any moment's notice and not be thrown off their game.)

* * *

He thinks they became friends on a cement floor outside a room that had just been disintegrated by explosives after they came flying out of it, hand in hand. If asked, he'd tell you that that's the moment they became more than just functional partners and moved into something personal. Before that day, they were only slowly moving toward completely trusting each other in the field. There had always been something between them that snapped and sizzled with a charge they didn't really understand, but there on the hard cement when she looks down at him and grins and they realize they're still _alive_, something moves them beyond the line of colleagues into a deeper realm of intensity.

(Maybe it was his comment about having just peed himself. Maybe it was the quick sweep of his hand to brush her hair back from her face. Maybe it was the hovering of hers as she held back from touching his cheek in the rush of adrenaline that came from exhaustion and explosions and emotion.)

He thinks he started loving her then, in a way. Not the same love that he feels now—this all consuming _thing_ that requires her to be the first thing that he sees when he wakes and the last thing he hears before he sleeps, that makes the thought of her with anyone else feel like death, that makes him see a little house on the beach and a little room painted pink and makes the possibilities of the future look more like the gleam of gold, like red and green Christmases, and like baby blue and pink instead of the vague grey that once was his expectation for the future. Not that love, yet, but the first flickers of it, a sort of affection that wasn't temporal or superficial either.

He loved her then, he thinks, like a friend. Like someone he needed to know was present and safe somewhere nearby. Like the first person in a very long time that would make the real laugh come out. Like someone he might care to see after the end of the work day and who might fill some of the empty spaces in his life.

* * *

He decides that she's his best friend, ironically, while Ray is there. He's standing beside the man that he's always called his best friend, the one he went to hell and back with more than once, when he realizes that the woman on his other side is really his best friend now.

Ray is still, certainly, his oldest friend. He is still one of his closest friends. But the years have changed them, and while the bond they have is going to be there _til death do us part_, they're from different worlds now, and they don't understand each other quite the same way they used to. The two men for whom _home_ was synonymous with pain and turmoil growing up had made their own space to belong with each other—they'd sworn as blood brothers to have each other's backs and to always have a place for the other wherever they were. They'd faced death and poverty and violence and fear together, and survived it. They're still brothers, Deeks knows, but they've made real homes now in different places, grown up homes for grown up men. Ray with Jennifer and this tiny new being that they're bringing into the world, and Deeks with NCIS and Kensi and Hetty and Eric and Nell and Callen and even Sam.

Deeks is pretty sure Ray knew before he did that Kensi had usurped the "best friend" position. And though Deeks isn't ready to agree with Ray's speculations on their _thing_, he can't deny how important she's become.

* * *

If he tried to pinpoint a moment when he realized that what he felt for her went beyond physical lust (because, really, everyone knows he's felt that since he first laid eyes on her), beyond partnership, beyond best-friendship, he'd say it was one night sitting outside a bar with a tattooed and dolled up Kensi playing bait for the bad guy a short distance away. He's always gotten a queer feeling in his gut when Kensi has to dress up to seduce a bad guy. (When he's honest with himself, he thinks he'd probably still get it if she was dressing up voluntarily to attract a normal guy.) That night the feeling is stronger, and eventually he recognizes it as a new feeling of possessiveness that Kensi definitely would not approve of.

For a minute, when Kensi's _"please. I am so your type" _came across the comms, he thinks maybe he's fallen asleep and dream-Kensi is talking.

But it's very-much-awake Deeks that feels the thrill of those words and realizes for the first time how very right she is. Kensi is _so _his type. Except that his type has always been shorter and blonder and gigglier. But, suddenly blonde and giggly sounds annoying and boring, and when he tries to define his _type_ he just sees Kensi. He likes her sense of humor—or maybe the lack thereof (he likes to be the funny one, after all), he likes her serious side, her sense of justice, her fierce determination, and her loyalty. He likes working with her and fighting with her and figuring her out. He likes that tentative look she gets when she's feeling insecure, but mostly he likes being able to wipe it off her face by reminding her how amazing she is.

And all that on top of her other _obvious_ assets.

(More than that, he realizes, now _he_ really wants to be _her _type.)

* * *

If asked to pinpoint a moment, Deeks would say he knew he loved her the first morning he woke up in bed alone after they returned home from being Justin and Melissa. He reaches for her instinctively and the other side of the bed is cold and the pillow doesn't smell like her, and something in him revolts with a force that surprises him.

(He figures out pretty quickly that it's his heart.)

Making breakfast alone feels wrong, and he fights the urge to make pancakes and then call and taunt her with their existence until she comes over to steal some. He realizes swiftly that _everything_ now feels wrong without her there beside him.

The unsettled feeling doesn't go away again until he convinces her to pick him up for work and she pulls up in the driveway, already taunting him for one thing or another, but with his favorite coffee in the cup holder. He slides in the passenger seat and something in him (darn heart again) settles and clicks into place, and he knows, staring at her profile as she drives, that he hadn't really ever understood what _love_ was until that moment.

(Almost every day for a year and a half after that, he secretly discovers that he still doesn't understand what love really is, because every day it means a little bit more, gives a little bit more, requires a little bit more of him.)

* * *

He's pretty sure the Cronut is the turning point in all the aftermath. Four months in and he still can hardly function. Four months, and she hasn't quit trying, even though something in him has been unable to let her in, until finally her presence chases away the edges of the darkness enough that he can finally start to see beyond it. He almost doesn't open the door. He hasn't, actually, opened his door for any reason in days—which probably explained how he's missed her gift up until then. In the end, the prospect of having to look out the peephole and see the hurt in her eyes if he _doesn't _open the door is worse than the prospect of having to face something of the outside world. Even in the depths of this hole that he can't find his way out of, he'd still rather take the pain himself than see her hurting.

But then he pulls a lumpy stale pastry out of a greasy paper bag, and everything else disappears. He's always kind of wondered if people actually listened to what he said, or if they just smiled and nodded in the right places until he stopped. Then he pulls a Cronut out of a takeout bag, and it hits him like a ton of bricks. She was listening. Not just listening, but remembering. And remembering the silly little things. She cared enough to fly a little pastry two thousand eight hundred miles across the country to try and cheer him up. And he hasn't even looked out long enough to see it. It's what he had needs to force him back into life again—a confirmation that if he doesn't need to live for himself, he still needs to live for her, for them. For months, his warped brain has been telling him that this was the end of the story, that there isn't going to be any more to tell. The little round donut hybrid seems to whisper at him that maybe he's been wrong. Maybe there's still more story to tell. More than that, maybe it's not the end of the story, but only the beginning. And maybe the story really is a love story. So, for the first time he feels like maybe he can find the light again. Because they _matter, _like nothing else has ever mattered to him before. If she wants him, then he'll be there.


	2. Chapter 2

He'd tell you that it's three days after the Cronut that is the turning point in their relationship. She'd say it was the day she bought it, paying an obscene amount of money to have it shipped express before it could get stale, all on the outside chance that it might cheer her partner up for even just a moment. She'd known for a while that she would reciprocate if he ever grew the cajones to say what he felt and instigate something. He was important. Scratch that, he was the _most_ important person in her life. But as she called the other end of the country to order a pastry, she made a decision: if he never decided to start the conversation on how he felt, then she would start it. She'd kick her fear in the teeth, make herself vulnerable and tell him that she wanted him, wanted _them_, even if he still felt broken.

Three days after the Cronut is his first day back to work, and it's almost good. He's still not quite sure he'd call anything _good_ yet—except Kensi of course. And the Cronut. Definitely the Cronut. They go for Korean after work and she devours her Bulgogi and then snitches off of his Japchae and he's pretty sure then and there that this is his last first date—and she doesn't even know it's a date.

He grabs her hand as they leave the restaurant and steers her away from the car toward a bench on the edge of a park down the street. The fact that she leaves her hand in his is not lost on him.

He's not really sure where to start, but it's come to the point where he can't imagine _not _saying something so he figures he'll just start and they'll get there eventually. He just hopes he doesn't end up babbling too much in the process.

"Kens," he says, turning to her and sitting them down, "I'm not really sure of much right now. Somewhere in the last few months I feel like I've lost who I was and who I wanted to be and I didn't feel like I knew what I wanted or what I could do or where I belonged anymore. "

He sees the pain flit through her eyes, and he moves his fingers to lace between hers and holds on tighter.

"The one thing I am sure of," he starts again, "is you.

"I'm sure that you're the only reason I'm getting through this. I know that when I just wanted to give up, I couldn't because I couldn't break my promise to you. When I wasn't sure that I could ever belong at OSP again, I still knew I belonged with you, if only I could just get back to you. When I didn't know if I could be the man I was, I knew that whoever I was going to be wanted you just as much as he did. When I didn't think I could let anyone in to see what was really going on in my head, I still wanted you there so much it hurt."

"Then why didn't you let me be there?" She interrupts, choking on a few tears that will not be held back. "I wanted to be there."

"I don't know Kens. My head was so messed up I didn't know which way was up. I wanted you there, but I didn't want you to see me that way, and I was convinced that I would just drag you down to the black hole that I was in.

"But you pulled me out. It's like you reached through all the crap and pulled out the things that were important and gave me a place to stand.

"And I know I'm still messed up, and no matter what I tell the guys, I know you're going to see past it and call me on my crap. And I know I need that. And I know that it's probably still not going to be easy, but I want you to know that I'm going to try as hard as I can, and I need you to know that what I'm fighting for is us-is you-because in all this crazy mess, you're still the only thing that makes sense. And as long as you're in this with me, I'm going to get through it."

Kensi lets go of his hand to put a hand firmly on each of his cheeks and holds him eye to eye with her.

"Then you're going to get through it, because I'm going to be here, and I'm going to be fighting twice as hard as you are. Because I can't lose you. Because you may be hard to live with," she smirks at him playfully, and his eyes smile back at her, "but you're a lot harder to live without, partner."

"And if I want to be more than your partner?" He needs to clarify all this because neither of them has actually said any words that definitely mean anything deeper than a _really_ close friendship, and he knows that with their communication skills things need to be made very plain before one of them figures out how to misinterpret it.

(Though, he thinks, there are certain modes of _communication_ that they're really good at. He likes those. A lot.)

She responds by whispering her lips across his. "Then I'd say we're on the same page."

He buries his head in the crook of her neck and wraps his arms snugly around her, and when her hand finds its way into his hair and her nails lightly scrape over his scalp, for the first time in months he can't see the darkness that has been taking over his world.


	3. Chapter 3

If asked, he'll tell you that, hands down, the best day of his life so far is the day that Kensi Marie Blye becomes Kensi Marie Deeks and promises him that, come hell or high water, she's always going to be there to pull him out. It's funny, there's been an awful lot of _best_ days lately. He is pretty sure for a while that it doesn't get any better than that day on a park bench when she told him she was going to fight twice as hard as he was for him, for their relationship.

He discovers he is wrong when, one afternoon in the bullpen a couple months later, Sam takes to speculating on whether or not Kensi and Deeks' _thing _will ever go anywhere.

Callen is taking playful jabs at him, incredulous.

"Come on, Sam. Deeks? Kensi'd never let him within five feet of her."

(Deeks finds this particularly ironic, since at the moment, Kensi is occupying a chair less than twelve inches from him, and her left hand is surreptitiously resting on the side of his chair, one finger almost subconsciously looped through his belt loop with her pointer finger just brushing the skin at his hip under his t-shirt.)

"I don't know, Callen, if you give them long enough she might lose enough brain cells from the volume of all that techno music and decide he's a good catch."

(Deeks has discovered in recent months that there's a difference between Old Sam and New Sam, even if some of the words don't sound much different. New Sam's eyes tell a different story, and Deeks has learned to read between the lines.)

"What do you think, Kens," Callen asks, "how many more brain cells do you think you'd have to lose before you decided that was a good idea?"

"I don't know, Callen," Kensi replies, tightening her grip on his belt loop and pulling so that her chair wheels itself as close as possible to his. "I think the better question is how many brain cells any other woman is going to lose if I see her trying to get within five feet of _him_?"

Deeks grin is wide and instantaneous. Callen and Sam are slower on the uptake.

Kensi raises her eyebrows at their slightly confused expressions, tugs on his belt loop, and leans in to meet his gentle kiss. Callen's eyes go wide, and Sam chuckles, but Kensi misses all that as she smiles into his eyes.

"Two months!" Deeks shouts gleefully. "We fooled you for two months! Who's the super agent now? Guess since you guys don't have my detective training, you just can't detect things like I can. I'm pretty sure I would have outed us like six weeks ago."

(Sam and Callen argue that they really already knew and were just baiting them to try and get them to admit it, but Deeks too clearly remembers the surprise in their eyes and doesn't believe that story.)

Kensi is unashamedly and openly touchy-feely with him the rest of the day, and Sam and Callen take a while to recover from being dumbfounded. It provides Deeks with endless fodder for teasing them, and the way Kensi outed them both swells his heart and boosts his ego, which he's pretty sure makes it his favorite day ever.

* * *

Then, one evening in the heat of an argument, she blurts out "don't you get it, Deeks? I love you. I _love_ you." He promptly forgets what they could possibly be arguing about because he's too busy doing his best to convince her that no one has ever loved as much as he loves her. There's no place in the next moments for worrying about who's _right_ or who's being unreasonable. It doesn't matter that they're in the middle of one of the crappiest cases of the year and they're all strung out and stressed, and that he got shot at today. She loves him. Best. Day. Ever.

* * *

Until she finds the ring in his nightstand drawer when she goes to grab the book she wants. He wasn't sure she was ready. He really didn't want to ask until he was sure what her answer would be- but then she finds it before he's quite sure she's ready for him to ask. She comes out of the bedroom, wide-eyed, with the little diamond ring in her palm. He's sprawled on the couch with a slice of pizza in one hand and a beer leaning on his leg.

She holds it up. "Ask me." It's not a request, it's a demand. "Ask me, Deeks."

He was still writing the speech in his head. He wasn't supposed to have to give it yet. But even the words he had practiced fail him when he's sitting there with her in front of him, holding her ring.

(His ring? Their ring?).

"Marry me, Kensi?" It's quiet the first time, a little bit tentative. But then he pushes himself up off the couch and plucks the ring from her hand.

"I believe this is still mine."

He always imagined he would get on one knee, but he doesn't.

(But then, he'd imagined a long romantic speech and a teary eyed Kensi in the sunrise on the beach, too, and for some reason it just seems right to stand there where he can look into her eyes. On the level. Equals. Partners still in this as they have been in everything else.)

"Kens, " he starts. "Marry me?"

There's no babbling about how he had always thought he'd die alone, no heartfelt speech about how he doesn't want to live without her. They know all that—they've seen the dark and the light and now they're staring in the face of this new life that is opening up before them.

"Yes."

* * *

When asked, he tells her that he had been waiting until he thought _she_ was ready. At that, she laughs and rolls her eyes.

"I'm the serious one here, remember Deeks? I'm the one that thinks though the whole plan and every possible outcome before I take a step. I've been all in since that day on the bench. Actually, maybe since the day I bought that Cronut. It took a long time to get there, but once I decided I jumped headfirst. I'd have said yes if you'd asked me on our second date. I'm not saying it would have been a good idea yet, but I'd probably have said yes anyway."

He's a little dumbfounded, but thinks maybe he should have known all that. When she gambles, she waits til she's ready and then lays it all on the line.

(He figures this might be their biggest gamble ever, but then, it's definitely got the biggest payback.)

* * *

A/N: And, that's all folks. Thanks for reading-I have no beta, but I appreciate constructive criticism, if you feel so led.


	4. Chapter 4

Deeks would tell you that love is not something he has ever considered himself an expert on. Life didn't exactly throw him the best examples. But, after six years as Kensi's partner and two as her husband, he figures he's starting to get a grasp on it.

Real love is not what his mother had felt for his father despite all he had put them through. Love is not the way his grandparents had treated his mother when she married "that worthless lowlife." Love is not what he felt for the list of girlfriends that had come before Kensi.

Love is not easy. It is not just the good days, but it makes the days good. He figures it's the reason why the recent years are filled with so many _best_ days when his younger years barely contained _good_ days.

Love means putting her happiness above his own. Love means that even if they fall asleep arguing, he wakes up with her in his arms. Love makes the urge to protect her almost uncontrollable. Love tells him that even when the fight is hard, it's worth it. Love means seeing past each others' failures and idiosyncrasies and faults. Love forgives. Love finds his shirts turned pink because she wanted to do something nice for him and washed his laundry. Love wears them anyway.

Five years into loving her, he figures he's starting to understand it.

Then one moment on their bedroom floor changes everything.

She's sitting with her back leaning against their bed and she's picking at the carpet and watching her hand absently when he gets home from taking Monty to the vet. Deeks cocks his head at her as Monty finds her there and lies down to join her, his old head settling into her lap and giving her hands a new occupation.

"Kensi? What's up?"

"I didn't feel good this morning."

He wrinkles his forehead and cocks his head further. "I know. I thought you were feeling better. Is it back?" he asks, crossing the room to lay a hand on her forehead.

"No, I feel okay now."

"So… we're sitting on the bedroom floor staring at nothing… why?" He plops down next to her.

"I didn't feel good this morning." She repeats.

"I think we already covered that, Babe. Do you want to go to the doctor?"

"No. I'm okay. But last weekend I was really tired all weekend."

"I remember… but we had a long week, Kens. We both just crashed. Except for some extracurricular activities that just made us _more_ tired." He smirks at her and she swats him. It's true, though, the weekend had been slow and lazy and perfect… in more than one sense.

(He can't bring himself to consider the possibility that she might actually think something is seriously wrong with her. She's his Wonder Woman—she's not allowed to be sick; his heart can't stand it.)

"But we had a fight on Friday."

"It happens, Kens. You know I love you even when we fight, right? Besides, you're hot when you're homicidally angry. I still say you were being a little bit unreasonable, though." He closes his eyes and braces himself for the punch that he's sure is coming, then pops one open to look at her when it never comes.

"Kens? Want to tell me what's going on in your head? Cuz I've got nothing at the moment."

"We had a fight because I was moody and then I slept all weekend. And last night I got up to pee twice and then I was sick this morning and I didn't want the jelly donut that I hid in the fridge. It just sounded gross, Deeks! My donut sounded gross! And then I found the tampons in the bathroom drawer and realized that I should have needed them two weeks ago."

She finally looks straight at him, and his eyes go wide as the light bulb goes on in his head.

His eyes flick from hers to her stomach and back again, then stomach again and back up.

"Are you… " He coughs, blinks, and looks back at her: "Are we having a baby?"

"I don't know."

"Should I… They have tests at the drug store, right? I could run and get one, and we could find out? It should only take me a few minutes to run there and back, and then we could find out, right? Kens? Do you want me to go to the store?"

She smirks at him. His mouth tends to get away from him sometimes, and she'd be lying if she said she didn't find it cute sometimes. Particularly now. Yep. Definitely now.

"I already did. I went while you were at the vet with Monty."

"And…?" He raises his brows at her. "Are you trying to kill me here, Kens? You said you didn't know."

"I don't. I peed on the stick and then you have to wait, and I came out here to wait, and then I was nervous and I was working up the nerve to go check, and I was trying to decide if I should call you first or just see and then figure out how to tell you when you got home if it was positive, and then you got home and started asking all these questions and now here we are."

After two years of marriage, he might be starting to rub off on her.

"So, it's in there?" He tips his head toward the master bathroom, "and it's ready to check?"

She nods. "Will you go look?"

He nods rapidly and clambers up.

"You want to be a big brother, Monty?" The shock is wearing off and a grin creeps across his face.

"Deeks?" She stops him as he takes a step toward the bathroom. "We haven't really talked about this for a while… we were going to wait and then we've been so busy and work is always so crazy, we haven't talked about it."

It's true. She knows he wants kids, they had that whole discussion vaguely while they were dating and then more directly on their honeymoon, but life at NCIS is rapid motion and the topic had been almost unintentionally shelved since then.

He bends to take her face in his hands.

"I love you, Kens. More than I ever knew I could love someone. And if we're having a baby, I'm going to be thrilled. We didn't plan the timing, but who cares? It'll be part of you and part of me and it'll be the smartest, strongest, most beautiful kid there ever was."

(In his mind, it's already a girl even though they don't know for sure that it's even there yet. )

Tears well in her eyes, and he starts to figure that she must be pregnant, because Kensi Deeks doesn't normally cry very often, even when he's being mushy and sentimental.

Her smile back up at him is watery but bright. "You're going to be the best dad ever, you know that right?"

Tears well in his eyes then, too. He hasn't ever directly said it, but she's always known that he's uncertain of his own fathering abilities, given his own less-than-stellar example.

"I'm going to give this kid everything, Kens. It'll always know that I love it more than anything else in this world. I want it to love me like you loved your Dad."

"It will. Now would you go check? We talking like it's almost here, and we don't even know if there's a baby yet. You're not supposed to wait more than ten minutes, and it's probably more than that now."

He pushes himself to his feet again in a rush, and in three long strides he's in the bathroom staring at the sink.

On the back of the sink not one but three white sticks are neatly laid in a row. All different brands, all with different ways of telling the results.

(He figures he should have expected that. Kensi is nothing if not meticulous and thorough.)

What's staring back at him is one blue plus sign, one blue line, and two red lines. The kitchen timer on the counter says it's been eleven and a half minutes since she took them, but according to the instructions that are laid open in front of each of the tests, he's still pretty sure they're definitely pregnant.

(He's still not sure anything can top the day that Kensi became his wife, but if this doesn't beat it, it's definitely a tie. )

He returns to the room with all three tests in his hand, lips between his teeth to keep the grin from splitting his face.

He doesn't say anything at first, just picks her up off the floor and lays her on their bed. He peels her tank top up to reveal her still flat, tanned belly and lays a kiss gently just above her belly button.

"Hi Baby. Daddy can't wait to meet you. I love you so much already, and Mommy and I are going to do our best to give you the best life ever. So be good to your Mom while you're in there ok? We can't wait to meet you."

His eyes are a little wonderstruck as he pulls back and looks up into her face.

"There's a baby in there."

He's always heard that pregnant women have a glow, but he's never really seen it until now. He's certain that she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and she's lying on his bed, wearing his ring, and having his baby.

(He thinks he maybe understands the Grinch at the end of the story- his heart has grown three sizes in the last five minutes.)

"I love you so much, Kens." It feels like there should be more to say, but for once he is struck nearly speechless. There aren't any other words to express the depth of the emotion that he has just discovered in his own heart.

Instead, he turns them so they can lie on the bed together. He laces his fingers with hers and then slips their joined hands under her tank top so he can feel the warm skin that guards the place where their baby is growing.

He loved her this morning when he left, but suddenly that love pales in comparison to what he feels now. Tears well in his eyes again. They're going to be a family. A family of three.

There is a fierceness that comes with that realization. A fierce love that demands that he protect them and provide for them above all else. A fierce need to give them everything he never had and everything that they could ever dream of. He never knew that you could love something that you couldn't see or talk with, but he does, and the strength of that love shocks him.

He loves this baby, and his loves its mother and his world has never felt more complete.

* * *

That's REALLY the end this time. This was supposed to be complete, then **Kerrison** left me review that said "... and chapter 4 will include "Best day ever" and "Pregnancy test." ;-)" and the idea got stuck in my head.

Thanks, all, for the lovely reviews. They're so encouraging.


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